1.Wall papers:They slow your whole system down,So if you are willing to compromise,Wall papers takes large memory of RAM so it slow down whole system, It is better to not using Wall papers as well as Screen savers
2.Drivers:Update your hardware Drivers as frequently as possible new drivers tends to increase system speed especially in the case of Graphics cards, their drivers are updated by the manufacturer very frequently.
3.Minimizing: If you want to use several Programs at the same time then minimize those those you are not using. This reduce the overload on RAM.
4.Restart only Windows: When restarting your System , hold down Shift to only restart Windows rather than the whole System which will take only a fraction of the time.
5.Turn off Animations:Go to Display Settings from the control panel and select Appearance tab under that go to Effects tab.Now Turn off show windows content while Dragging and Smooth Edges on screen Fonts.
6.Faster Start-Menu Access:Go to Start Menu and select Run. Now type
Regedit and hit Enter. Now, open the Folder HKEY_CURRENT_USER\CONTROL PANEL\DESKTOP. You should see a MenuShowDelay value. If you don't then do the following: right click on a blank space in the Right pane and select New/String. Change the name in the new value to MenuShowDelay. Now we have the MenuShowDelay, double click on it and enter 0 in the value data field. This sets the Start Menu delay to 0 milliseconds.
7.Resolutions: If are willing to do anything for faster performance from your PC, then try lowering your display resolution. The lower it is,the faster your PC.
8.Turn off Active desktop:Go to Display properties and switch to the Web tab. Uncheck view my Active Desktop As a Web page. Since the Active Desktop option uses a lot of system resources, this option effect the speed of the system.
9.Defragment Often: By Defragmenting Drives, Data is physically arranged on the drive so that application will load Faster.
10. Stretching wallpapers: Don't 'Stretch' your Wallpapers. Since it slow down your system
11.Upgrade RAM: If your RAM is less than 256 MB then try to upgrade it. Windows run much more smoothly with higher MB of RAM and tends to use less hard disk space for virtual memory.
12.Refresh the Task bar with out Restarting: If you in some way change the task bar, either in Regedit or elsewhere, you can Refresh the task bar with out Restarting . Hold down Ctrl Alt
13.Quick CD Eject: Instead of pushing the button on your drive, right-click your CD drive letter in My Computer and click on Eject. This will also remove any icons that have become associated with the CD drive.
14. Start Up Programs: Windows can be slowed down when programs run on start up. To eliminate this, check your Start up folder. You can access it from the start menu: Start, Programs, Start Up. Another way to eliminate programs from loading even before Windows actually starts is by doing the following: Click on Start, then Run. Type msconfig. It will take quite a long time for this program to load, but when you finally see it on your screen, explore the different tabs. They all have to do with how quickly your PC boots, so select what you want, and uncheck what you don't want!
15. Fonts: When Windows starts, it loads every single font in the Fonts folder. Therefore, the more fonts you have, the slower the booting process. To get rid of unwanted fonts, simply go to the Fonts folder under c:\windows and remove whatever you don't want. Fonts that have a red letter 'A' as their icon are system fonts, so don't delete them.
16. Faster Internet Access: If you use the internet for reference and the sites you visit are rarely updated then try the following. In IE (the same can be done in Netscape) go to Tools, Internet Options. Next, click on Settings... in the Temporary Internet Files section. Finally, select Never for the first option and double the amount of storage space to use, click OK!
17. Partitioning: A very nice little thing you can do to boost system performance. By partitioning your hard drive, splitting one physical drive into several logical ones, you can gain several advantages. 1. If you get a virus or you accidentally format a drive, not all will be lost. 2. By placing the swap file (Win386.swp) on a separate drive, The swap file will be less fragmented and thus, faster. 3. Place Windows on a separate drive and whenever you need to reinstall it, you rest assured that your data is safe on a separate drive. Partitioning can be done using a few programs such as FDisk which comes with DOS. However, FDisk formats everything on the hard disk before partitioning. Alternatively, you can use Partition Magic from Power Quest to partition your hard disk without losing your data.